Hometown Heroes Award Program

About Hometown Heroes

They find creative solutions to environmental challenges. They engage others in support of a sustainable community. You may know them as students, teachers, neighbours, volunteer groups or local businesses, but to Earth Day Canada, they’re Hometown Heroes working to support a healthier planet.

The Hometown Heroes Award Program is your chance to help Earth Day Canada recognize and celebrate Canada’s environmental leaders who foster meaningful, long-term community awareness and action.

Heroic candidates can win one of five awards.

Youth Hometown Heroes Award – a $5,000 cash prize that can be donated to a local environmental group or cause, or be put toward post-secondary studies in the form of a scholarship.

Individual Hometown Heroes Award – a $5,000 cash prize to donate to a local environmental group or cause.

Teacher Hometown Heroes Award – a $5,000 cash prize to support the teacher’s environmental work at school.

Group Hometown Heroes Award – a $5,000 cash prize to support the group’s work.

Small Business Hometown Heroes Award – a $5,000 cash prize that must be used by the business to make an operational change that results in the business lessening their environmental impact, and permission from EDC to use the award and EDC logo for one year to help market and promote the business and/or an approved product.

The Hometown Heroes Award winners will be celebrated by Earth Day Canada and its partners at an awards ceremony in June, 2017, in Toronto.

Youth Hometown Heroes Award

Are 24 years of age or under at the time of nomination – February 28, 2017

Demonstrate outstanding environmental leadership, commitment and achievements in their schools and/or local communities

Carry out voluntary, not-for-profit environmental efforts, outside of their course requirements and/or employment activities, with notable accomplishments that have resulted in continuous, long-term and sustainable impacts within their schools and/or local communities

Engage, educate and empower other students and/or community members to support a healthier environment

Focus their environmental efforts in Canada

Are Canadian citizens or permanent residents (landed immigrants) of Canada

Individual Hometown Heroes Award

Are 25 years of age or over at the time of nomination – February 28, 2017

Demonstrate outstanding environmental leadership, commitment and achievements in their communities

Carry out voluntary, not-for-profit environmental efforts, outside of their employment activities, with notable accomplishments that have resulted in continuous, long-term and sustainable impacts within local communities

Engage, educate and empower community members to support a healthier environment

Focus their environmental efforts in Canada

Are Canadian citizens or permanent residents (landed immigrants) of Canada

Teacher Hometown Heroes Award

Earth Day Canada will consider teacher candidates who:

Are a teacher at an elementary or secondary school located in Canada that is either publicly funded or independent with charitable status

Demonstrate outstanding environmental leadership, commitment and achievements in their school communities with a focused effort on connecting the school community (students, staff and parents/guardians) with nature

Engage, educate and empower the school community (students, staff and parents/guardians) to support a healthier environment through direct connection with nature

Are Canadian citizens or permanent residents (landed immigrants) of Canada

Thank you for your Hometown Heroes Awards submissions. Please note that the deadline has now passed. We will be announcing the winners in May 2017, and wish everyone who has submitted their application the best of luck.

Congratulations to our Hometown Heroes Award Winners & Finalists!

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Youth Hometown Heroes Award Winner

Emmanuelle Melis – Toronto, Ontario

Emmanuelle (Emma) Melis, head of her high school Eco Team, has led successful fundraising campaigns for environmental charities and raised money to install a water bottle refilling station at her school. She also implemented composting and recycling systems in local elementary and high schools, works to raise awareness about pollinator population conservation, and is writing and illustrating a children’s book series called The Climate Change Chronicles.

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Youth Hometown Heroes Award Finalists

Hayley Todesco – Calgary, Alberta

Hayley Todesco of Calgary, Alta., has spent the last decade solving local environmental issues through science fair projects after a documentary ignited her zeal for these causes. In the last nine years, she has entered research-oriented projects in 18 science fairs. One of these was a design for an inexpensive set of bioreactors to biodegrade naphthenic acids, which are found in tailings ponds. After two years of troubleshooting and redesigns, she found that by creating biofilms, the indigenous bacteria she grew were capable of degrading these pollutants at rates 14-times faster than normal. A full-scale implementation of her results could potentially clean this pollution in decades instead of centuries.

Maya Burhanpurkar – Oro-Medonte, Ontario

Maya Burhanpurkar of Oro-Medonte, Ont., is an 18-year-old student who will be attending Harvard in the fall. At the age of 14, while in the Canadian and Greenlandic Arctic, she was so moved by stories of the devastating impacts of climate change on local Inuit that she created a critically acclaimed climate change documentary, 400 PPM, which has been screened around the world. Maya is the youngest research scientist ever to work at the famed Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and at the Institute for Aerospace Studies at the University of Toronto and continues to give talks around the world on climate change.

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Individual Hometown Heroes Award Winner

Jean Hall-Armstrong – Thunder Bay, Ontario

Jean Hall-Armstrong, co-chair of the Public Advisory Committee to the Thunder Bay Remedial Action Plan and member of the Thunder Bay District Stewardship Council and Thunder Bay Field Naturalists, is a community worker with a focus on improving water and wildlife habitat in the Great Lakes. She participated in an initiative to remediate a site containing 50,000 cubic metres of creosote-contaminated sediment, and has worked on various habitat projects to purify the water and boost local wild life populations and biodiversity.

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Individual Hometown Heroes Award Finalists

Lisa Scott – Summerland, British Columbia

Lisa Scott of Summerland, BC, is a Registered Professional Biologist, active in the field of habitat conservation. In 2006, Lisa pulled together a group of local biologists, naturalists and other scientists with expertise in natural resources, to form a volunteer group called the Summerland Environment Science Group (SESG). SESG has provided input for an Official Community Plan, secured funds for mapping sensitive areas along two nearby creeks, assisted with an enhancement project at the mouth of Prairie Creek, conducted invasive plant pulls throughout the community and developed terms of reference for environmental impact assessments.

Bruce Mackenzie – Grimsby, Ontario

Bruce Mackenzie of Grimsby, Ont., has been working on environmental projects in the Grimsby and Hamilton area extensively for the last three years since his retirement. He is the Director of the Bird Study Group of the Hamilton Naturalists’ Club, HNC, and is also a past president. He is also a director of the Niagara Peninsula Hawkwatch. Over the last three years, Bruce has written articles on a variety of topics in the Wood Duck, the monthly journal of the HNC and in Niagara Escarpment Views magazine. He is the 2016 recipient of the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Foundation’s RT. Hon. John Turner Water and Environmental Leadership Award.

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Teacher Hometown Heroes Award Winner

David Gordon – Toronto, Ontario

David Gordon is a teacher at Dunbarton High School in Pickering, Ont., where he runs the environmental student council. He played an important role helping students adopt a local park and revitalize it by planting a pollinator garden and 300 native tree species and installing educational signage. He also advised a group of students in launching the Greenbelt Youth Charter, in partnership with EcoSpark, in 2015 — here, 100 community guests and eight NGOs gathered to hear talks on the importance of sustaining the Ontario Greenbelt.

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Teacher Hometown Heroes Award Finalists

Ann Jackson – Russell, Ontario

Ann Jackson of Russell, Ont., is a science teacher at St. Thomas Aquinas High School. In 2010, Ann oversaw the design and construction of a greenhouse and now grows a variety of heritage vegetables. She maintains a Giving Garden with a diverse harvest including heirloom tomatoes, peppers, squash and berries for local residents to help themselves. As Green Team leader, her school received Eco School gold certification for eight years for hosting events such as the annual Living Locally Fair and Swap Meet and for planting trees and edible shrubs. Ann has also led multiple teacher workshops to share her environmental passion and classroom ideas.

Pascale Baillargeon – Iqaluit, Nunavut

Pascale Baillargeon of Iqaluit, Nun., has a wealth of knowledge about the unique conditions of the Nunavut environment. Her classroom is known as a jungle, zoo, or soil production factory depending on the week. Due to the isolated location, fresh food is expensive with little selection. Due to the uniqueness of the Arctic environment and the challenges of living in such an environment, she started the Green Club, which engages youth in projects such as worm composting and soil production, plant propagation studies, upcycling, material recycling and clothing swaps, a chicken and quail farm incubation and co-op project, and, most recently, a hydroponics plant, not to mention the yearly green plants and vegetable seedling projects. Pascale has also organized and leads school eco-trips in the arctic but also to places such as the Galapagos and Costa Rica.

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Group Hometown Heroes Award Winner

The Riverwood Conservancy – Mississauga, Ontario

The Riverwood Conservancy is comprised of an active board of directors, staff and volunteers in Mississauga who lead school and public programming such as nature walks and astronomy nights while also devoting thousands of hours to restoring wildlife habitats, planting native plant species and connecting people with nature. Almost 100,000 members of the community have engaged in efforts spearheaded by the Conservancy.

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Group Hometown Heroes Award Finalists

Clean Annapolis River Project – Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia

Over the past four centuries, the Annapolis River has suffered a wide range of devastating manmade effects. In the 1990’s, a group of concerned citizens banded together to create the Clean Annapolis River Project Society (CARP) and laid the foundation for what now spans 27 years of stewardship, restoration, and conservation initiatives. CARP is active in regional initiatives, such as the NSLC Adopt-a-Stream program, the Atlantic Canada Estuary Healthy Assessment project, and a multi-partner coastal acidification project for the Bay of Fundy.

Rivers Collegiate – Rivers, Manitoba

Rivers Collegiate in Rivers, Man., is a high school that has planned and is working on a five-year project at the local wetlands; the staff and students also work to educate the greater community about habitat restoration and the environment. Throughout the course of the project, docks and boardwalks have been built at the wetlands, a wind powered aerator have been installed and walking paths have been created. More recently educational signage and an outdoor classroom have been developed. Ironically, as Rivers has been under a boil water order for the past three years waiting for its new multi-million dollar water treatment plant to come online, bringing awareness to the importance of healthy water systems and conservation of natural resources is of noteworthy importance.

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Small Business Hometown Heroes Award Winner

Fresh City Farms, Inc. – Toronto, Ontario

Fresh City Farms produces, sources and delivers fresh, local, primarily organic produce and prepared meals with as low a carbon footprint as possible. They deliver using electric vehicles or bicycles and encourage pickup from centralized depots to minimize emissions. Fresh City’s newly built greenhouse has a solar-paneled roof, a rainfall capture system and a drip irrigation system to conserve water. The company goes to great lengths to avoid disposable packaging (they are known for their salads, soups and smoothies delivered in reusable jars). Excess food is sold to juicing or jam-making companies or simply donated to staff or local community organizations, and they regularly open their doors to volunteers and students looking to learn more about sustainable agriculture practices.

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Small Business Hometown Heroes Award Finalists

Passive Design Solutions – Hubley, Nova Scotia

Passive Design Solutions in Hubley, NS, is a design and consulting ﬁrm that creates Passive House custom designs and stock plans and offers energy consulting and construction support to clients interested in environmentally responsible building. Last year, PDS was involved in 3% of all new home construction in the province. Owner Natalie Leonard has a vision to make Passive House the world’s leading energy eﬃciency standard, ﬁnancially aﬀordable for all homeowners in Canada. After rigorous training, Natalie became the ﬁrst Certiﬁed Passive House Consultant and first Certified Builder in Canada.

Sawmill Sid Inc. – Mississauga, Ontario

Sawmill Sid Inc. in Mississauga, Ont., is an Urban Wood Specialist small business, and is a trailblazer in innovative, sustainable, community-based solutions to urban wood waste. They are a family-owned company that recovers wood typically tub-ground or chipped and sent to dumps around the GTA. The wood comes from trees that have been felled due to disease, storms and development. Sawmill Sid now operates from the Toronto & Region Conservation Authority’s Tree & Wood Recovery Centre, and in 2016, they sequestered 6,800 tonnes of carbon emissions.

About Hometown Heroes

The Hometown Heroes Award Program, established in 2004 by Earth Day Canada, recognizes and celebrates environmental leaders, groups and small businesses who foster meaningful, long–term community awareness and action. The Hometown Heroes Award Program is made possible through the support of Mill Street Brewery, the RBC Foundation and UFile Tax Software.

About Earth Day Canada

Celebrated every year on April 22, Earth Day is the largest environmental event in the world. More than six million Canadians—including nearly every school-aged child—participate in an Earth Day activity in their communities. We partner with and support hundreds of organizations across the country, as they engage Canadians in annual celebrations of this special day.

Founded in 1990, Earth Day Canada is a national environmental charity. We offer free, year-round, award-winning programs to educate and inspire Canadians of all ages, backgrounds and sectors to reach local environmental solutions. Our mission is to foster and celebrate environmental respect, action and behaviour change that lessens our impact on the earth.

About the Hometown Heroes Award Program

What is the Hometown Heroes Award Program?

The Hometown Heroes Award Program, established in 2004 by Earth Day Canada, recognizes and celebrates environmental leaders who foster meaningful, long-term community awareness and action.

Is there a prize associated with the awards?

Yes, there are five awards in five categories; the Youth Award, Individual Award, Teacher Award, Group Award and Small Business Award.

Youth Hometown Heroes Award – the winning youth will receive a $5,000 cash prize to donate to a *local environmental group or cause of his/her choice, or can choose to put the cash prize toward his/her post-secondary studies in the form of a scholarship. The winner will also be recognized at an awards ceremony in Toronto (any necessary travel and accommodation provided).

*Please note that the group must be a registered charity, registered not-for-profit or school.

Individual Hometown Heroes Award – the winning individual will receive a $5,000 cash prize to donate to a *local environmental group or cause of his/her choice. The winner will also be recognized at an awards ceremony in Toronto (any necessary travel and accommodation provided).

*Please note that the group must be a registered charity, registered not-for-profit or school.

Teacher Hometown Heroes Award – the winning teacher will receive a $5,000 cash prize to support his/her environmental work at school. The teacher will also be recognized at an awards ceremony in Toronto (any necessary travel and accommodation provided).

Group Hometown Heroes Award – the winning group will receive a $5,000 cash prize to support the group’s work. The group will also be recognized at an awards ceremony in Toronto (any necessary travel and accommodation provided).

Small Business Hometown Heroes Award – the winning small business will receive a $5,000 cash prize that must be used by the business to make an operational change that results in the business lessening their environmental impact. In addition, Earth Day Canada (EDC) will provide the small business winner permission to use the EDC logo for one year to help market and promote the business and/or an approved product. The business will also be recognized at an awards ceremony in Toronto (any necessary travel and accommodation provided).

When is the nomination deadline?

The next deadline for nominations is February 28, 2017.

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Eligibility criteria

Who is eligible to win a Hometown Heroes Award?

Hometown Heroes are individuals, groups and small businesses who help the environment in their community and beyond. They lead others to environmental awareness, action and a more sustainable future. They make a difference and improve the state of the environment at the local level. Please visit Eligibility for additional information.

What must be submitted to Earth Day Canada?

To submit a nomination for the Youth, Individual, Teacher, Group or Small Business Hometown Heroes Award, please submit the following to Earth Day Canada:

Two items of supporting documentation (with a limit of five one-sided pages or five minutes for each item) substantiating the candidate’s environmental achievements (e.g. two of the following items: newspaper articles, brochures, videos, photographs with captions, testimonials, etc.). All documents exceeding these requirements will not be considered in the judging process.

Two reference letters on letterhead (please limit each to a single page). References cannot come from relatives or employees of the candidate.

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Completing and submitting the nomination package

I need assistance with the nomination package. What should I do?

If you have questions about completing the nomination package, please contact heroes@earthday.ca.

How do I submit a nomination?

I submitted a nomination to the Hometown Heroes Award Program. Will I be contacted with a confirmation of receipt?

Yes, an email confirmation will be sent to all nominators and nominees. If you do not receive a confirmation email, please contact heroes@earthday.ca.

Can youth, individuals, teachers, groups and small businesses self-nominate?

Yes, youth, individuals, teachers, groups and small businesses can self-nominate.

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Judging and selection process

How are the nominees evaluated and selected?

An external judging panel of community, business and environmental leaders select the Hometown Heroes Award winners. Candidates will be evaluated on the quality of their environmental and community contributions. Earth Day Canada, Mill Street Brewery, the RBC Foundation and UFile Tax Software are not involved in, nor have any influence over, the decisions of the judging panel.

If I am not selected for the award, will I still be notified?

Yes, notifications will be made by email to all nominators and nominees by end of May, 2017.